Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/300

 276 BENGALI LITERATURE stimulus given by the British contact which raised Bengali Literature out of the slough of general decadence into which it had been plunged after the death of Bharat- chandra. The vernacular was raised Stimnlating influence ne if not above, at least on the same of British contact. level with, the classical languages, which had hitherto held the undisputed sway. But the literature of Bengal, which had _ hitherto belonged to the people in general, shifted its centre of activity from the peaceful village-homes to the crowded cities and the metropolis, and under the patronage of an alien lettered class, imbued with new ideas and novel methods, it lost its represeutative character, its primitive colouring, and its pristine simplicity. ae ae টি It is true that the literary spirit of colouring. the people, even though arrested temporarily, never died out and that the last echoes of the great Baisnab and Sakta writers still lingered faintly in their less worthy successors, the Kabiwalas, the Yatrakars, the Kathakas or the Painchalikars, through whom they have coloured even our modern ways of thought; yet when the literature revived, with the creation of a new lettered class and a new public, it revived “ with a difference.” It will be seen, however, that this era of Bengali literature is éssentially an era of prose and one of its greatest achievements is indeed the creation of modern prose-of-all-work. The prose of the first decade of the century, however, that we are passing in review, has ০ little or nothing delectable to a mere formal importance. literary taster, but to the critical student it possesses great interest and importance. For this was indeed: the beginning of Bengali prose properly so called ; for before i800, it may